MIDDLE EAST: ROBERT FISK

Infoshop: 'It's the same old Iraq, just a tiny bit worse than it was last month'
Each time I return to Iraq, it's the same, like finding a razor blade in a bar of chocolate. The moment you start to believe that "New Iraq" might work - just - you get the proof that it's the same old Iraq, just a little tiny bit worse than it was last month.

Commondreams: The Life and Unexplained Death of a Palestinian Militant
Mohamed Aboul Abbas, the 'Achille Lauro' planner, said he never intended passengers to be held hostage or anyone to be killed, and apologized for it. The US and Israel allowed him back to Gaza. So why was he in a US prison in Iraq?

When 55-year-old Mohamed Aboul Abbas died mysteriously in a US prison camp in Iraq on Tuesday, nobody bothered to call his family.

His American captors had given no indication to the International Red Cross that he had been unwell and his wife Reem first heard that he was dead when she watched an Arab television news show.

Yet in his last letter to his family, written just seven weeks ago and shown to The Independent in Baghdad yesterday, the Palestinian militant wrote that, "I am in good form and in good health", adding that he hoped to be freed soon. So what happened to Mohamed Aboul Abbas?